The fact that this article resonates, should I infer that the startup economy is picking back up?
GitHub's fake star economy
241–250 of 403 posts
Re: GitHub's fake star economy
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't follow American Football so I don't know how coaching contracts work for you guys, but how does someone go 1W 15L one season, survive as head coach to go 0W 16L the next season, and still start the next season after that as head coach? Over here the fans would be singing "You're getting sacked in the morning" halfway through that first season. I guess not having relegation makes things slightly less ruthless…
Browns fan in. We're owned by a criminal (truck stop-related fraud) who was convinced by a homeless person to draft Johnny Manziel. trust me, we want to put him (and Paul Dolan) into graveyard orbit. but it's not like Vercel where you can just go use AWS or Cloudflare or whatever; and it's not like switching makes you weak, you stand by your team through the hard times! plus, what is an NFL fan going to do, stop watc…
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Re: GitHub's fake star economy
#243Can anyone explain why on earth VC's are making actual investment decisions based on imaginary internet points ? This would be like an NFL team drafting a quarterback based on how many instagram followers they have rather than a relevant metric like pass completion, or god forbid, doing some work and actually scouting candidates. Maybe the Cleveland Browns would do that[0], but it's not a way to mount a serious Super…
Because the entire point is to be early to something here. If you wait for profitability, the guy is already funded. So you have to use proxies, and the proxies will be imperfect, but you don't have to be perfect. You just need some degree of performance. Stars are (were) an early indicator of community interest and predictably became goodharted when this became known. But I think it's been since 2022 since anyone seriously used stars for VC targeting so this is sort of old hat.
It's a bit like the old article about evaluating software companies on whether they have version control or not. Everyone has version control now.
Re: GitHub's fake star economy
#244Can anyone explain why on earth VC's are making actual investment decisions based on imaginary internet points ? This would be like an NFL team drafting a quarterback based on how many instagram followers they have rather than a relevant metric like pass completion, or god forbid, doing some work and actually scouting candidates. Maybe the Cleveland Browns would do that[0], but it's not a way to mount a serious Super…
> Can anyone explain why on earth VC's are making actual investment decisions based on imaginary internet points?
It's purely incentives. Heavy competition for early signal identification has pushed them to crappier and crappier indicators.
Re: GitHub's fake star economy
#24515 mins into this - Built this to identify the fraudsters https://github.com/mercurialsolo/realstars We should do a hall of shame!
Can you vibe code up a firefox plugin, too?
Re: GitHub's fake star economy
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Listening to All In is a real eye opening experience. Especially when they have guests on and they're exactly like the regulars.
I actually think this take is wrong... but the moment Travis Kalanick was a guest and claimed that he was on the verge of discovering new physics with the aid of ChatGPT was an eye opening moment.
Re: GitHub's fake star economy
#247Very simply, you need to see VCs as branding companies who give people with many followers brand deals. VCs think that if you have a lot of stars, you must have hit product-market fit — or something close — because many developers have started using your open-source tool. This isn’t necessarily always the case. Every weekend project from Andrej Karpathy gets loads of stars because he is the most famous person on GitH…
> Andrej Karpathy…is the most famous person on Git Hub Is he really? I’ve only heard of him because HN is obsessed with his “AI” takes. Is he really that popular outside of this bubble?
If you asked a typical person outside of San Francisco or Silicon Valley, nine times out of ten they wouldn’t have a clue who he is. However, as a co-founder of OpenAI and the former Director of AI at Tesla, he is widely known and respected in the tech world—especially for coining the term 'vibecoding.'" He comes in as second on the list of Github Users Global Ranking right behind mister linux: https://wangchujiang.com/github-rank/.
Re: GitHub's fake star economy
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
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true, but the way I would frame it is we are all morons in someone else's eyes. No one is as smart as they think they are. The mistake Americans make is thinking that rich people are so smart that everything they do is smart.
I don't think this is always true, but it's true a lot. I think there are better descriptions than moronic as well. People use moronic when people are just as smart but have a different (and possibly better) direction. It's just the case that it defies the will of the other person.
These people go to the extreme and feel they have to outdo each other in an arms race to win whatever category it is today.
You can have extreme ambitions without being a moron. It's possible for someone to be empathetic, but also really driven. The problem is that they are locked in a downward spiral and they can't possibly be vulnerable. It's only when they run out of money, or some other extreme event occurs that they change tack. That's moronic, especially when the outcomes are predictable.
There is a lot to be said about SV culture and the people that surround these VCs. A lot of people love these environments and more than tolerate the environment these VC folks create. It's hardly a new phenomenon.
Re: GitHub's fake star economy
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
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this is compounded by young, newly rich tech workers (no kids, no mortgage, maybe not even a car) experimenting with being a VC because they've recently reached accredited investor status. and it's not just ZIRP. every recent IPO or liquidity event creates literally 500 more of these guys.
> maybe not even a car
Hold up — one can be mature without any of those things, but cars are especially optional.
Re: GitHub's fake star economy
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